The south side of Music City Center will consist of administrative offices instead of retail space as originally planned. / John Partipilo / The Tennessean

A rendering of the south side of the Music City Center shows glass rather than the beige brick and aluminum in the finished building.

Stretching 19 acres and six city blocks, it stands alone in size and scale.

And even before Music City Center will open in May, the $585 million facility, love or hate it, has emerged as one of the city’s iconic structures.

But along the way, project leaders detoured slightly from plans city boosters first showed Nashvillians before the Metro Council voted on it.

What was once conceived as 40,000 square feet of retail space along a revamped Korean Veterans Boulevard with the possibilities of restaurants, shops and other amenities is now pegged as administrative offices for the center’s staff. Retail is reduced to a 2,200-square-foot coffee shop.

And a preconstruction architectural rendering of the south side of the center that featured lots of glass and windows barely resembles the final product. Much of the building’s rear is instead beige brick and aluminum, fueling some to say the development team missed an opportunity to “activate” all sides of the center, making it inviting and open to passersby.

Lacking these components won’t inhibit how the center lives up to its chief purpose: luring conventioneers and boosting tourism. But they are features originally conceived to make Music City Center less of a “wide-scraper” while engaging people who might otherwise never attend convention events.

Observers haven’t forgotten.

“We are definitely a long way from the unconventional convention center that was first discussed in 2007, when we approved the taxes,” said Metro Councilwoman Emily Evans, a critic of Music City Center’s financing arrangement. “But that’s what happens with a lot of public buildings.

“You have to build what you can afford.”

Plans abandoned

When city leaders first explored locations for a new convention center, a report from the nonprofit Nashville Civic Design Center in 2006 classified the location that it settled on to be “very strong” so long as the center had commercial space along Korean Veterans Boulevard on the center’s south side between Fifth and Eighth avenues.

It called the site a “potential catalyst for continued redevelopment of SoBro” if the center’s design featured a mixed-use component. It also would quell fears of a “big-box” effect, the study said, while not including retail would “detract from the character” of the corridor.

Charles Starks, president and CEO of Music City Center, said project leaders decided to abandon 35,000 to 40,000 square feet of retail at the center after a market study determined the SoBro neighborhood couldn’t handle an influx of additional retail.

Through a process known as value-engineering, the center reduced expenses by building space for administrative offices instead of retail.

“We just didn’t feel there was a need for that ground-floor retail right there,” Starks said before referencing the bottom line of his line of work: “When you start looking at it from our customers’ side, whether we have retail in there doesn’t really matter to them.”

The center’s lone retail component now will probably be a coffee concept, he said.

Despite an early rendering that shows a striking plaza at Korean Veterans Boulevard and Eighth Avenue near a new roundabout, with windows that reach the roofline of the building, Music City Center officials say the shift to the building’s current south side was a functional choice not made for financial reasons: They used materials to hide heating and cooling equipment and had to carve out a place for truck loading docks.

Officials also note that this stretch still features street-level windows, an outdoor balcony and meeting rooms that open to the outside.

Seab Tuck, principal of Tuck-Hinton Architects, the project’s Nashville-based architecture firm, pointed out the early rendering showed space for a planned Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum — now slated for Municipal Auditorium — at the roundabout. He said they have left 14,000 square feet of “buildable land” between the building and the roundabout, which could potentially be developed one day.

Starks, meanwhile, rejected assertions they created a “back side” in terms of aesthetics, while noting that truck loading docks had to go somewhere.

Hot property

Shelby Smith, whose family owns land south of the center, said he feels the design team could have done a better job embracing Korean Veterans Boulevard and the area around it. Still, he’s pleased overall.

“We’re experiencing strong activity on our property,” Smith said of the land he hopes to develop, adding he’s thrilled with how the nearby street roundabout turned out and appreciates some of the architectural elements on the south side.

So far, new development around the center is limited to upcoming hotel projects, a Nashville Electric Service substation and a new downtown police precinct.

A recently released South of Broadway Master plan found one of the area’s weaknesses is too many hotels ringing the center and a dearth of retail.

Gary Gaston, executive director of the Nashville Civic Design Center, called it “really unfortunate” that the retail component went away. He said the building itself is “eye-catching” but suggested the south section has fallen short.

“Inevitably, that southern facade is not quite as appealing as that northern side of the building, which is where all the attention was put,” Gaston said. “To me, the burden of activating the boulevard is going to fall on all the new construction that will be done on the south side of the street, and that’s unfortunate.”

While the elimination of sizable retail marked the most significant change from original plans, project leaders went through $50 million in total value-engineering in 2009 to reduce its cost from $635 million to $585 million — a reduction announced before the council’s project financing vote.

“It was almost like a labor negotiation,” said the center’s senior project development manager Larry Atema, recalling how he weighed the concerns of architects with those of others.

To reduce costs, officials decreased the height of the building by 4 feet to eliminate $2 million worth of glass; changed the floor of an exhibit hall from tile to carpet, built a slightly smaller ballroom; cut out certain kitchen equipment; and built a shorter exterior canopy at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Demonbreun Street.

A reoccurring criticism of convention center projects is that residents rarely have reason to visit. The entire city is invited to a May 20 concert headlined by Sheryl Crow — and officials say an arts collection, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and 1,800-space parking garage will continue to attract Nashvillians.